“Fire’s breath assails
The all-nourishing tree,
Towering fire plays
Against heaven itself.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Thorpe’s tr.).
This fire raged most fiercely until everything was consumed, when the earth, blackened and scarred, slowly sank down beneath the boiling waves of the sea. Ragnarok had indeed come; the world tragedy was over, the divine actors were slain, and chaos seemed to have returned to resume all its former sway. But as in a play, after the actors are all slain and the curtain has fallen, the audience still expects the principal favorites to appear and make a bow, so the ancient Northern races fancied that, all evil having perished in Surtr’s flames, goodness would rise from the general ruin, to resume its sway over the earth, and some of the gods would return to dwell in heaven forever.
“All evil
Dies there an endless death, while goodness riseth
From that great world-fire, purified at last,
To a life far higher, better, nobler than the past.”